Austria-Hungary's Role in Outbreak of WWI

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND THE ORIGINS OF WORLD WAR I

This research paper examines Austria-Hungary's degree of responsibility for the outbreak of World War I. Its thesis is that actions taken by Austria-Hungary to deal with Serbian nationalism in the decade preceding, and in the five weeks following, the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 set in motion a series of events which led to World War I. However, a number of other nations, Serbia, Germany and Russia, and, to a lesser extent, France and Great Britain, played important roles in causing that war. The origins of the war lay in the mistaken judgements of many key European statesmen and in the breakdown of the balance of power system in Europe during the decades immediately preceding 1914.

The Hapsburg Empire, the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, was dissolved in 1918 as a direct result of the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I. Under Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty, all damages and losses suffered by the victorious Allies were stated to be "a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies" (Fleming, 1968, p. 191). In fact, the central problem which triggered the initiation of hostilities among all the Great Powers of Europe for the first time in more than a century was an intractable dispute between Austria-Hungary and the kingdom of Serbia. Bismarck had predicted that the next major European war wou

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tria-Hungary wished to start more than a localized war against Serbia. To keep Russia, which strongly supported the Serbs, out of such a war, Austria-Hungary had to obtain the support of Germany. Austria-Hungary correctly perceived that "if she was not passively to acquiesce in her own destruction, she had little choice but to deal sternly with Serbia;" (Goodspeed, 1968, p. 154), however, its leaders took a "recklessly calculated risk" (Taylor, 1963, p. 212) in thinking that Austria could settle by force accounts with Serbia without provoking a wider war. Once Germany gave Austria-Hungary its unconditional backing, the Kaiser's so-called blank check, the die were cast. In Goodspeed's view, "Austria's guilt is far more direct than Germany's because of "its readiness to persevere . . . [with its war plans] even when it became apparent that this would result in a major European war" (Goodspeed, 1968, p. 156). Its Ten Demands of July 23, which British Foreign Secretary Grey called "the most formidable document which he had ever seen addressed by one state to another" (p. 126), gave Serbia little opportunity to back down gracefully. If a fait accompli was intended, Austria-Hungary's cumbersome internal decision-making process an

Category: History - A